Oscar Hijuelos, 1951–2013
The novelist who examined assimilation
Oscar Hijuelos was the first Latino recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, but he was born in New York City and lived there his entire life. Critics said he was more American-Cuban than Cuban-American, but he disliked being pigeonholed by his ethnicity. “I basically do my own thing,” he said. “I quietly write novels.”
Hijuelos was born to a family of Cuban immigrants in the “bustling, multiethnic neighborhood” of Morningside Heights, said the Los Angeles Times. He spoke no English until he was 4, when a kidney disorder forced him to stay in a Connecticut hospital for a year. Being separated from his family had a lasting effect on his ethnic identity, he said, and colored his later work. “I became estranged from the Spanish language and, therefore, my roots,” he said. He started writing as a teenager and worked in advertising as he “honed his literary craft on the side,” with an emphasis on how American culture informs the immigrant experience.
Hijuelos won the Pulitzer for his second novel, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, said The New York Times. The 1989 book portrays the success and subsequent downfall of a pair of jazz musician brothers, the “flamboyant and profligate bandleader” Cesar and the “ruminative trumpeter” Nestor. Mambo Kings avoided politics but dealt with the “conundrums of assimilation,” particularly how making it in America can be fraught with sadness and loss as well as excitement and novelty. The novel, wrote Times reviewer Michiko Kakutani, was a “Chekhovian lament for a life of missed connections and misplaced dreams.”
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Hijuelos later wrote that his feeling of estrangement from his roots ebbed as he grew older. “I eventually came to the point that, when I heard Spanish, I found my heart warming,” he said. He came to terms with himself, he said, “through my writing, the process by which, for all my earlier alienation, I had finally returned home.”
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
July 6 editorial cartoons
Cartoons Sunday’s political cartoons include paying for school lunch by enlisting, and the banality of evil
-
5 biting editorial cartoons about 'Alligator Alcatraz'
Cartoons Artists take on dangerous green things, historical precedent, and more
-
A journey into the deep past on beautiful Arran
The Week Recommends New Unesco Global Geopark played a 'key role' in the birth of modern geological science
-
Brian Wilson: the troubled genius who powered the Beach Boys
Feature The musical giant passed away at 82
-
Sly Stone: The funk-rock visionary who became an addict and recluse
Feature Stone, an eccentric whose songs of uplift were tempered by darker themes of struggle and disillusionment, had a fall as steep as his rise
-
Mario Vargas Llosa: The novelist who lectured Latin America
Feature The Peruvian novelist wove tales of political corruption and moral compromise
-
Dame Maggie Smith: an intensely private national treasure
In the Spotlight Her mother told her she didn't have the looks to be an actor, but Smith went on to win awards and capture hearts
-
James Earl Jones: classically trained actor who gave a voice to Darth Vader
In the Spotlight One of the most respected actors of his generation, Jones overcame a childhood stutter to become a 'towering' presence on stage and screen
-
Michael Mosley obituary: television doctor whose work changed thousands of lives
In the Spotlight TV doctor was known for his popularisation of the 5:2 diet and his cheerful willingness to use himself as a guinea pig
-
Morgan Spurlock: the filmmaker who shone a spotlight on McDonald's
In the Spotlight Spurlock rose to fame for his controversial documentary Super Size Me
-
Benjamin Zephaniah: trailblazing writer who 'took poetry everywhere'
In the Spotlight Remembering the 'radical' wordsmith's 'wit and sense of mischief'